Happiness

It is an overwhelming, complicated and frustrating world for certain. There are frightening events happening everyday, outrageous things, things that make us say what-t-at?  Peace and happiness are states very hard to reach and to hold on to, for most of us average humans.  Far wiser people than I, have said much about the pursuit of happiness. You know, that constitutional guarantee...not the happiness itself, just the right to pursue it.

I've always been impressed by the ability of some smart folks to lay out such pearls of wisdom in just a few words.  I love quotes and they often inspire a whole train of thought that makes me ponder the answers to life's vast questions.  My quote this week, made well over seventy five years ago, is a great one.  It has to do with the small things, not the huge mistakes that we make, the big destructive behavior that we preform but just the stupid little things that we seem to repeat that make our lives very frustrating.  Reminds me of another of my very favorites that more or less says, Don't keep repeating the same behavior and thinking you will get different results.

I'm just repeating the wisdom of many, you are truly the only person that can make yourself happy, you are responsible for your own happiness, no matter what life if throwing at you.  I'm more or less saying what I said in an earlier blog about getting organized, one little step at a time.  Don't try to remake your whole life, your bad habits or destructive attitudes in one day.  Pick some small thing that, if you put your mind to it, you could either improve or plain stop it...quit repeating that behavior.  Sometimes the organizing thing is very close to the frustration of your life. In other words, if you just make a solemn promise to yourself,  "I will never walk in this house and put the car keys anywhere but right there on that hook"....immediately you are a touch more organized but more important, you are far less frustrated and therefore a touch happier. 

Sometimes being happier is about rewards and sometimes it is about discipline.  If you're a frustrated writer and keep telling yourself, I don't have time or when I get a nice place to sit and write...stop it today.  Clear away a spot, a corner and sit for one hour. Write, or make notes or just think about what you want to write.  Just one hour and go back to it another day and do the same.  The two things that you can take control of in this world, are your environment and your actions. 

There are some awesome and spectacular people, the I'm going to climb that highest mountain type of person. Let's get real, most of us are NOT that. Personally, I've always felt those people teeter right on the edge of insanity.  The huge majority of us just want to find happiness, perhaps would like to feel that we made someone else happy.  That is a goal that any one of us can accomplish. Forget the mountain, merely move that one small rock from your path and go forward. Don't look where you've been and don't worry about the rocks farther ahead. Find your joy in the path you cleared right in front of you.